Fitzgerald: Not one returns to tell us of the Road
29 April 2021
Strange, is it not? that of the myriads who
before us passed the door of darkness through
not one returns to tell us of the Road
which to discover we must travel too.
—Edward Fitzgerald (1809–1883), translation of Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam(Omar Khayyam was a Persian mathematician, and astronomer, and possibly poet, 1048–1131. His authorship of the poems attributed to him is not certain). The translation is considered a work of excellent poetry itself; not all the verses are to be found in the original Persian.
Photo by slworking2 on Flickr
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